Monday, 19 April 2010

Super Sensitive Toads Hop It

Amphibian and Reptile Conservation have picked up an article about a colony of toads that disappeared before the L'Aquila quake.

Scientists have been studying a colony of breeding toads living in an Italian lake. They found that they all suddenly disappeared five days before a magnitude 6.3 earthquake struck the town of L'Aquila in central Italy on 6 April 2009. Within days of the earthquake, the toads returned to their breeding pool to continue spawning.

It has been suggested that the toads may have been able to detect the release of radioactive radon gas from the ground, or the presence of charged particles in the ionosphere of the night sky.